202 : The Atlantic 



from Holland in the summer of 1596, while renewing his voyages to 

 the north also discovered Bear Island. He also sailed to Spitsbergen, 

 giving it that name. At the time, he supposed that Spitsbergen was 

 part of Greenland. Though he was wrong in this supposition, he was 

 right in believing that there was good hunting in this part of the 

 world. From Barents' time on, the Dutch began building large fleets 

 of ships which hunted whale, seal and furred animals in these waters. 



Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Dutch 

 whaling industry was both large and profitable. They built a town 

 in Spitsbergen solely for the use of their whale fleet. Its name was 

 "Smeerenberg" or, as we would say, "Blubbertown." 



At the height of the industry as many as 1,000 whaling ships 

 would touch here in the course of a season. Though the Dutch made 

 extensive use of Spitsbergen, Barents was not the first to have been 

 there. By the end of the twelfth century the Icelanders had already 

 been in these waters. As early as 1557 the English had organized the 

 Muscovy Company to carry on exploration, hunting and trade in the 

 northern part of the world. It was on behalf of the Muscovy Com- 

 pany that Hudson made his trip in 1607 which stimulated the growth 

 of British whaling. In Spitsbergen waters the English and the Dutch 

 were soon joined by the Danes and the Basques, Whaling by Euro- 

 pean ships off the west coast of Greenland and in the Davis Straits, 

 having been started by the Basques in the fifteenth century, had 

 reached large proportions in the eighteenth century when as many as 

 350 ships would visit these waters during the season. The first ship 

 from America came to these waters in 1750. 



By this time whaling in America already had a history over one 

 hundred years old. The colonists in Massachusetts began hunting the 

 whale in local waters as early as 1630 and, from then on, it continued 

 to be a prosperous business — first for the colony and then for the state. 



Naturally these first ventures involved small ships and confined 

 themselves to the taking of blackfish and the smaller kinds of whale 

 that were often seen along the shore until they had been fished out. 

 As whales became increasingly difficult to find alongshore, larger ves- 

 sels were built and longer voyages undertaken. 



In time New Bedford and Nantucket were among the foremost 

 whaling ports of the world. Many other ports along the American 

 coast soon joined in and regularly participated first in local whaling 

 and then in the world-wide hunt. In Connecticut there was Mystic, 

 Stonington, New London and many other ports. Whaling began on 



